Campaign Notebook
Donald Trump Can’t Get Over What Happened to President Biden
At a news conference in Florida on, Mr. Trump said “the presidency was taken away from Joe Biden” by a cabal of Democrats including Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris.
To hear former President Donald J. Trump tell it, he has just been heartsick over all that has happened to poor old President Biden these past few weeks.
“The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday afternoon. “I’m not a fan of his, as you probably have noticed. He had a rough debate. But that doesn’t mean that you just take it away like that.”
It has been 18 days since the 46th president was shoved aside by his own party, and the 45th president has yet to get over it. He agonized on Mr. Biden’s behalf, telling a tale of treachery perpetrated against him by former President Barack Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, most of all, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Recounting how Ms. Harris had attacked Mr. Biden in a Democratic primary debate in 2019 — “She was nasty with calling him a racist and the school bus and all of the different things” — Mr. Trump said Mr. Biden had made a grave mistake by choosing her as his running mate.
“For some reason, and I know he regrets it — you do, too — he picked her,” Mr. Trump said. “And she turned on him, too. She was working with the people that wanted him out.” (Mr. Biden endorsed Ms. Harris for president 27 minutes after he dropped out of the race.)
There was none of the usual, malicious glee in Mr. Trump’s voice as he rehashed all the drama. He told reporters that Mr. Biden was trying to “put up a good face” but that his exit from the race was “pretty severe” and “pretty horrible.”
“I hate to be defending him,” Mr. Trump said, “but he did not want to leave. He wanted to see if he could win.”
This sudden outpouring of sympathy for a man he recently called “a broken-down old pile of crap” was somewhat surprising.
Perhaps there was some projection at play: Was the dismay Mr. Trump expressed for his erstwhile opponent really just dismay at the predicament in which he now finds himself?
It was all going so well for him until Mr. Biden decided to drop out. Now, Mr. Trump is up against a more energetic challenger, one who has erased his fund-raising edge and who can compete with him in his most sacred metric: crowd size.
Really, it seemed like it was Mr. Trump who was trying to “put up a good face” when he said, “We were given Joe Biden, and now we’re given somebody else. And I think, frankly, I would rather be running against the somebody else.”
And yet, just two days ago, Mr. Trump was wondering aloud on social media if there might be any chance that Mr. Biden would crash the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this month to try to “take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE.”
What is curious about Mr. Trump’s seeming inability to adapt to his new political reality is that he and his supporters predicted earlier than anyone that Mr. Biden would be switched out for another Democrat at some point. “I cannot believe he’s going to be the nominee,” Mr. Trump said in an interview last year. His supporters hardly seemed surprised when the Democratic establishment began braying that Mr. Biden must exit the race.
At certain points on Thursday, Mr. Trump’s ruminating on how Mr. Biden felt forced to forfeit power seemed maybe like a window into Mr. Trump’s own thinking. The idea of the former president ever voluntarily giving up a powerful position seems alien.
Was he was speaking from experience when he said Mr. Biden was “not happy with any of the people that told him, ‘You’ve got to leave’”?
“He’s a very angry man right now,” Mr. Trump said. “I can tell you that.”
Advertisement
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment